Men’s Soccer Falls at No. 6 Georgetown

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University men’s soccer team fell 3-0 to No. 6 Georgetown on Friday evening at Shaw Field in Washington D.C.

“We didn’t play badly,” coach Marlon LeBlanc says. “We gave up a couple of soft goals to start off the game and then, outside of their two goals, we were in the game. They are too good of a team to give a two-goal lead to.”

Sophomore forward Brandon Allen, a preseason All-American, netted two of the Hoyas’ (2-1) three goals, including the game winner. In the 14th minute, Allen scored the first with assists from Keegan Rosenberry and Austin Martz. Bakie Goodman then found Allen for the second score five minutes later, in the 19th minute. Goodman was responsible for the final goal in the 63rd minute, assisted by Alex Muyl.

The Mountaineers (1-1-1) were forced to play a man down from 56th minute on as sophomore defender Francio Henry was ejected with a red card.

“We were there and it was a really bonehead decision that hurt us,” LeBlanc says. “We started the second half very well and were on top of it, crawling our way back into the game, and had to go down to 10 men and, again, they’re too good of a team to play with a man down.”

The Hoyas outshot the Mountaineers 15-10 behind Allen and Steve Neumann’s five shots each. Georgetown recorded seven shots on goal to WVU’s single shot on goal from Ryan Cain.

“We were getting back in the game and found some attacking moments, but we were just missing the target with the finishing. Any time you’re two goals down your team starts to tighten up a little bit,” LeBlanc explains. “Andy and Jamie did a good job of trying to put the pressure on and saying if we can get a goal we can get back in the game.”

The Mountaineers return to the pitch on Sunday, Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. as they take on the defending national champions No. 5 Indiana in Bloomington, Ind.

“Hopefully we learned some lessons tonight,” LeBlanc says. “We are an awfully young team and we’ll have bumps and bruises along the way, but I told the guys regardless of whether we won or lost the game today, we have to just forget about it and go to Indiana on Sunday. For us this is about trying to stay positive. This is a young group and they learned a hard lesson tonight in terms of our maturity and being the better team.”